How to Pick a Good Bed Pillow

Everyone deserves a good night's sleep, and a crucial part of getting a good night's sleep is choosing the best bed pillow for you. The wrong pillow can lead to headaches and stiff necks in the morning, which guarantees a bad attitude. A good set of pillows may set you back financially, but quality pillows will last a long time and will be a worthwhile investment. So browse some of your options below, and then have fun shopping! Or should I say, have fun sleeping?

Pillows filled with synthetic polymers and fibers are some of the cheapest and most common on the market. The quality range in these types of pillows is enormous, from rock hard to cloud soft. The price range is also just as wide, from $9.99 to $80 for one pillow. I'm usually very old-school about my bedding, shunning synthetics, but some of the synthetic pillows that imitate down are to die for. I personally have two down-alternative pillows on my bed and they are like sinking into a cloud. They are substantial as well, and feel exactly like a real down pillow. Of course, these set me back almost $80, but they are the cream of the crop. If you need decent pillows, right now, synthetic filled pillows are a viable option.

The old school staple is now a sign of luxury. Down pillows (the quality ones) can be very expensive, at times upwards of $125 each. There are cheaper down pillows, selling for around $15 each, but you want to stay away from cheap down pillows like a rat with bubonic plauge. The cheaper the pillow the less down (soft fluffy stuff) the pillow contains, and the more feathers it has. Feathers are stiffer and won't provide that cloud-like feeling, and as an added bonus they will also poke through the fabric and stab you in the middle of the night. I love a good down pillow like nothing else, they are so huggable and soft. But to save money I usually take my mother's hand-me-downs or buy these puppies second hand. If you can afford a good down pillow new, consider yourself lucky!

This stuff is everywhere on the market, from mattresses to mattress toppers and so on. Of course there are pillows as well. Your head will sink into one of these puppies very slowly, it's a strange, indescribable feeling. Some people (like me) find these pillows to be too hard and unyielding to be enjoyable. Other folks say that they can never go back to a normal pillow because the memory foam has really enchanced their sleep and made their necks feel better. My advice, borrow one first to see if it's for you.

At the end of the day the thing that really counts is what you like. Some people prefer very stiff pillows, others like to sink into a sea of down. Find out what makes you most comfortable through trial and error, and don't talk yourself down. You deserve a good night's rest, so get going!